Pumpkin Pies and PCs
by Zana Zira
Summary: A good brother keeps his sibling from doing stupid things, like entering a pie-eating contest despite having just gotten over a three-day stomach bug. A better brother steps in and does it for him instead. Luckily for Dean, Sam is a really, really good brother. Sick!Sam, caring!Dean. NO slash. Happy Thanksgiving!


**Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are the property of Eric Kripke. Sadly, I do not own any of these guys.**

**A/N: So this story came from a completely random plotbunny, and I almost didn't write it at all, but I decided to go ahead and finish it so I can see what everyone thinks. If you have a chance, please leave a review. It would mean a lot. **Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!****

* * *

"Hey, Sammy, check this out."

Sam lazily flicked his eyes toward where his older brother sat at the tiny dining table in their latest motel room, trying to make out what the text on the laptop screen said without actually having to raise his head off of his pillow. He was glad Dean was feeling energetic enough to surf the Web this morning – really, he was – but after the way the last three days had gone for him Sam wanted nothing more than to curl up and fall into a coma for at least ten years.

The entirety of the week thus far, from Sunday night to Wednesday morning, had been spent nursing his older brother through some kind of terrible food poisoning, likely from eating a suspiciously greyish-looking steak that Sam had warned him about when they stopped at a diner in Buffalo, New York on Sunday night. In hindsight, he should have known something was up the second Dean asked him to drive. By the time they had left the diner and crossed to the other side of Erie County, not even an hour away, Dean was clammy and shaking, his skin starting to take on the same color as the Jolly Green Giant's.

Barely ten seconds later, after hearing a strange gulping sound and catching sight of Dean's suddenly wide eyes, Sam had just barely managed to pull over and push his brother's head out the passenger door and over the pavement in time to save the upholstery from utter ruin.

Everything after that had pretty much been a blur. He'd stopped and booked a room at a place called "The Fels Three Crown Motel" in Clarence, hurriedly helping Dean into the tiny, cramped red-tile bathroom before making his way to the nearest mini-mart so he could stock up on Gatorade, soup, crackers, and Pepto-Bismol. By the time he got back, Dean had migrated to the bed, where he was curled up in a shivering ball under the covers, trashcan close to the side of the bed.

That was pretty much how he stayed until the middle of Tuesday night, only moving when he had to get up and go to the bathroom, moan pathetically in his half-delirious misery, or throw up into the trashcan that had been strategically placed near his head from the beginning. Sam ran himself ragged the entire time, forcing medicine and fluids into his brother as often as he could, rubbing Dean's back and keeping cool cloths on his neck as he struggled through the dry-heaves, and washing the sheets and Dean's clothes every time he missed the can so he didn't have to sleep in filth.

By the time he had finally recovered it was the day before Thanksgiving, they had done absolutely nothing to prepare for the holiday, Dean was getting stir-crazy, and Sam was sleep-deprived and cranky.

Sighing when he realized he hadn't responded to Dean yet and he couldn't actually read whatever his brother wanted him to see from ten feet away, Sam lay back and closed his eyes again.

"Can you just read it to me, please? I don't wanna get up."

Dean sighed dramatically, making Sam feel like punching him, and then did as his little brother requested.

"There's a pumpkin pie-eating contest here in Clarence tomorrow," he said excitedly; Sam could practically hear him drooling from across the room. "It's just across town. Apparently they hold it here every year, and the first-place winner gets five-hundred dollars cash! I'm totally gonna enter so I can get that new laptop we've needed for, like, five years now."

At that, Sam sat up, eyebrows raised so high they looked like they might attempt to jump off his face at any second.

"Are you serious?" he asked, Bitch-face Number Twelve already starting to settle in across his features.

"Uh, _yeah,_" Dean said, like he thought Sam was a total idiot. "I don't joke about pie."

"Dean, that's a terrible idea!" Sometimes Sam was astounded by how little common sense his older brother could have when it came to his three favorite things: women, booze, and pie. It was if all the instincts and training they had spent years perfecting simply disappeared when one or more of those was present, turning Dean into a grown man with all the self-preservation instinct of a five-year-old.

"For God's sake Sam, it's pie!" Dean snapped, crossing his arms and glaring at his brother. "What the hell could be wrong with pie for you to bitch about?"

"Are you even hearing yourself right now? You just managed to keep something thicker than chicken broth down this morning for the first time in three days, and only barely, and you think stuffing yourself full of sugary fruit paste and pie crust is a good idea?"

Dean's face fell a little, and Sam almost felt bad about how let-down he looked. Until he remembered how much time he'd spent cleaning up after Dean the last three days, at which point his sympathy pretty much evaporated.

"So what are we supposed to do then, Sam? It's an easy five-hundred bucks just waiting to be taken, and you know we need a new laptop. That piece of crap we have now is about to die any second."

"Yeah, well if you'd quit surfing porn on it all the time, it might not be on its last legs."

"My point still stands."

Sam sighed, running a hand through his hair as he contemplated a solution for this. Dean was right, it was a very easy, very _legal_ five-hundred dollar prize, which in and of itself was rare for the two of them to come across. Add to that the fact that pie was one of Dean's favorite treats, and it would have been perfect. But as it was, Sam knew Dean didn't stand a chance in that competition. Three days of sickness had already made his tolerance for heavy foods extremely low, and enormous amounts of the stuff? Forget it.

But maybe…

Sam paused for a moment, taking a deep breath and making sure he had really thought this through before he said anything. Finally, realizing he had no other option besides dealing with a mopey, depressed Dean on Thanksgiving, he sighed and spoke up.

"Maybe… I could enter instead?"

"Uh… what?"

"I said I'll enter the contest for you, okay? That way we can get the money without you having to make yourself sick all over again."

"Sam, are you sure? You don't even like pie."

Sam shrugged. It was true, he didn't really care for any kind of pie very much. Sugary, fatty foods like that tended to make him nauseous now since he'd been religiously eating healthy foods for so long. But they really did need a new computer if they wanted to stay up-to-date on all the latest cases and lore, and there didn't seem to be many other options short of stealing one. Besides, Sam was a giant of a man, with a huge amount of room in his long torso to pack food into if he so chose. He usually didn't anymore, but he remembered being able to suck all the food off the table like a vacuum cleaner in his teenage years and barely even taste it, so he suspected he still could.

"Yeah, I'm sure," he finally answered, giving Dean a weak grin and hoping he looked surer than he felt. "But you have to promise me that if I win this prize money for you, you'll use this new laptop and stay off of mine. I like the one I already have anyway, and I'm sure once I do a virus cleanup it'll work just like it should again. Besides, I'm sick of seeing Busty Asian Beauties pop-ups every damn time I open it up."

Dean grinned so brightly it almost made Sam forget he'd just agreed to sign up for death by pie.

"Deal."

"Good." He sighed, laying back down on his bed as the drowsiness that had been building for three days threatened to pull him under. He just really hoped this wasn't a bad idea.

* * *

"Oh, this was _such_ a bad idea…" Sam muttered as he stared across the seemingly endless rows of pie-filled plates sitting in front of him at the long table. "I'm gonna regret this, I just know it…"

"Hey, don't talk like that!" Dean chided, clapping him on the back in a way that was probably meant to be encouraging. "You'll do fine! Here," he said, cracking the lids off the three bottles of water the judges had set out at his section of the table. "You'll want these ready. Just don't puke and don't choke and you're golden. No way any o' these pansy-ass New Yorkers can beat a Sasquatch like you."

"Oh yeah?" asked a deep, booming voice from Dean's left, and both brothers turned to face the newcomer. The guy wasn't extremely tall, maybe five-foot-nine, but he was big-boned and beefy and balding, and very thick around the middle in a way that told Sam he probably hadn't missed many meals in his life. He wore a red shirt that hugged his protruding gut way too tightly, and a brown leather biker-wannabe vest over it. A big pair of black sunglasses hid his eyes from view, but Sam could only imagine how beady they probably were when squashed into the middle of his big round pancake of a face.

"You think you can beat me, Stretch?" he asked Sam, striding up and poking him in the chest, a gutsy move considering Sam was seven inches taller and had a lot more muscle than the pitiful amount hiding under this guy's thick blubber layer. "I've won every eating competition in this county at least once, and no-one else has ever come close to beating me."

Sam blinked. Oh. Right. He'd kind of forgotten some people actually did this for fun, not just because they lived out of their car and really needed money.

"Well I wouldn't have guessed that by looking at you," Dean muttered, and Sam glared and stomped on his foot so hard he had to smother a yelp of pain.

"Yeah, you just yuk it up, buddy," the man said to Dean. "You won't think it's so funny when your skinny little boyfriend here humiliates himself in front of everyone." He laughed and gave Sam's flat belly a slap with the back of his hand, missing the look of disgust that crossed both brothers' faces at hearing Sam called Dean's boyfriend. "Why aren't you up here too, huh? Too worried about getting your pretty little face dirty to do anything but cheerlead?"

This time Sam had to push Dean back to keep him from clocking the guy in the jaw.

"Dean! Calm down," he said firmly. "Just go sit down and wait until it starts." He turned and stared the guy down, eyes wide and unblinking and slightly crazed-looking, as if he could see straight into the guy's soul. "I'll take care of this, don't worry."

Dean nodded and stalked stiffly away, taking a seat in the front row so he could see everything that went on. Sam sighed and stretched, working the tension out of his shoulders while the rest of the contestants filed into their places behind the long table. Finally, everyone was lined up, and the MC came up to the mic and announced the rules of the contest: It would last ten minutes, and the goal was to eat as much pie in that time as possible. Anyone who got sick or left the table for any reason would be immediately disqualified. Sam sighed and took a deep breath, steeling himself for what was to come.

"And THREE! TWO! ONE! EEEAAAAT!"

As soon as the contest started, Sam completely forgot about anything else going on around him, grabbing one piece of pie after another and shoving them between his lips as fast as he could. The pie was soft and mushy, so it went down easy without even really having to chew, and once he figured out how to take a sip of water before trying to chew through the crusts they disappeared almost as quickly as the filling.

"YOU CAN DO IT, SAMMYYYY!"

He could hear Dean cheering loudly from down in the crowd, and although he didn't look up he gave a thumbs-up vaguely in his brother's direction to let him know it was going well.

The first eight pieces went down so fast he barely noticed them, but by the time he'd reached ten it was starting to feel weird. He gulped down yet another bite of bright orange pie, suddenly having to swallow hard when he felt like it was going to make an immediate reappearance. Shit, now it was starting to hurt… That thought made him lose his focus for an instant, and he got a little bit of filling down the wrong pipe, coughing roughly and pounding his chest with his fist while he got a drink of water to wash it down.

"Six minutes left!"

Taking a few more precious seconds to collect himself, he dove back into the row of plates in front of him, now feeling each bite dropping into his stomach like a rock and realizing he never should have worn a belt to this event. He felt nauseous, the sweet flavor and gooey texture of the pie having long ago lost its appeal, and he clapped a hand over his mouth, gagging once and earning a gasp from the crowd before he suppressed it and went back to eating the disgusting dessert like it was going out of style.

Desperate for something to distract him from his own ever-growing discomfort, he looked over at the scoreboard, realizing that several people had already stopped, and he was only one piece behind that biker wannabe from earlier. How in the world that had happened, he had no idea. But Dean seemed to realize it at the same moment Sam did, and his constant cheers of "Go, SAAAM!" got even louder, if that was possible.

"Two minutes!"

Now that he realized he actually stood a chance, he redoubled his efforts, stretching his mouth as far as he could and sucking down the pie so quickly he was in very real danger of choking on it if he wasn't careful. It hurt so badly now he was surprised there weren't tears in his eyes, and he wondered how the hell people could ever want to do this as a hobby. As it was, he wasn't sure how he hadn't puked all over himself yet. The one-minute timer sounded, and Dean started up a chant of "Sam-my! Sam-my! Sam-my!" so enthusiastic that it actually got the people sitting immediately around him doing it too. He could do this, he could do this, just a little more…

"Three… Two… One… STOP EATING!"

Thank. God.

Sam put down his last empty plate, slumping down into the chair behind his place at the table and closing his eyes while he waited for the judges to tally everything and tried to keep from throwing up all over them. He unbuckled his belt and opened the button on his jeans, sighing in relief when he at least felt like he was able to breathe normally again since guts weren't pushing up into his diaphragm so much. But it didn't do anything to get rid of the unsettling and uncomfortable feeling that his stomach now had its own heartbeat.

"Alright, ladies and gentlemen!" the MC shouted into the microphone. "It was close, but the winner this year, with a whopping twenty-five slices – that's just over EIGHT POUNDS of pie – is… Saaaammm Winchesteeerrrr!"

The crowd burst into applause, and Sam's eyes flew open in surprise.

"What? Me?"

"That's right! You won by two whole slices, Sammy!" Dean said happily, apparently having hopped up on the stage while Sam wasn't looking. The judges quickly pulled him and Dean in for a picture, handing him a big trophy shaped like a piece of pie to hold up while Dean stood beside him and beamed at the camera like he'd never been more proud of Sam in his life. Then again, this was pie, and Sam had just eaten more of it in one sitting than Dean ever had; he probably _hadn't_ ever been this proud of Sam before.

Once they'd received their prize – and a few nasty looks from Mr. Biker Wannabe – they made their way to the Impala, and Sam found himself thanking whoever was listening that the motel was fairly close, because he really didn't feel well at all anymore. The first thing he did was make sure the metal trashcan was lined with a plastic sack and pulled close to the bed; he didn't feel like he was going to be sick at that moment, but he wasn't taking any chances. Then he curled up on his side in a loose ball, arms wrapped around his disturbingly distended belly while he rubbed it in an attempt to soothe the angry churning and gurgling he could feel inside.

The bed suddenly dipped on one side and Sam groaned, giving a small hiccup when his stomach protested the unplanned movement.

"Hey, you gonna be okay if I go ahead and pick that laptop up now?" Dean asked quietly, his features uncharacteristically soft in a way that said he was actually worried about leaving Sam alone. He knew how little junk food the younger Winchester normally ate, and that he was bound to be feeling really crappy soon if he wasn't already. "You feel sick right now?"

"Of course I feel sick right now. For God's sake, I ate so much pie I look like I'm five months pregnant!"

Dean smirked. "I always knew you'd show how much of a girl you were someday, Sammy."

Sam snorted, cracking a tiny grin in spite of himself. "I hate you."

"Yeah, I know. Seriously, though, you want me to stay? You need anything?"

"Just get out of here and buy that damn computer you wanted so bad, jerk."

"Bitch."

And with that, Dean picked up the keys to the Impala and headed out, leaving Sam curled up in a ball of misery to deal with his pie overdose in peace.

* * *

When Dean returned a couple of hours later, he wasn't surprised to find Sam's bed empty and the bathroom light shining through the almost-closed door. And although he felt bad about it, he also wasn't surprised to hear the painful-sounding retching coming from behind the door.

He had known this would happen sooner or later – the human body just wasn't meant to consume eight pounds of pie in ten minutes; even someone like Dean, who considered pie to be almost as wonderful as sex, wouldn't have been able to keep it down for long. So he had left Sam and gone to the store to pick up some supplies other than the computer, such as more Gatorade, saltines, and Pepto, because he had used up their supply of them during his own recent bout of sickness. And now it was time to do what he did best – take care of Sammy and make this a Thanksgiving worth remembering.

"Sam?" he called, knocking softly on the door once he'd put the supplies down on the table. "You alright?" When the only answer he got was a muffled whimper and more gagging, he let himself in, wetting a washcloth under the tap and putting it on the back of Sam's neck. Sam flinched and then sighed in relief, and Dean knelt beside him, rubbing his back as his body continued trying to get rid of every last bit of the offending dessert it could.

Once it seemed to have stopped for the moment, Dean helped him stand and guided him to the bed, holding up the covers while he got under them and making sure the trashcan was still within easy reach. Once he'd gotten Sam to take a few sips of Gatorade and a little bit of Pepto, he set the bottles on the bedside table, making sure his little brother could reach them if he wanted them.

"Well, in case you were wondering, it turns out I wasn't pregnant," Sam joked drowsily, wincing when he chuckled and it pulled his sore stomach muscles. "It was just an eight-pound food baby."

Dean sighed, feeling really bad now that he saw how pale and shaky Sam looked after that enormous overload of crap-food.

"Ah, Sam, I'm sorry, man. You know I would've done it instead if I could."

"I know," Sam said with a yawn. "I'm the one who volunteered, remember? 'S my own fault. And besides, we needed the money." He hiccupped again and groaned. "But just so we're clear, if you bring so much as a pumpkin seed anywhere near me in the next year, I am going to kill you."

"Noted."

"Oh, did you get the computer?" he suddenly asked, seeing the large cardboard box sitting on the dining table on the other side of the room.

"Yeah," Dean said, smiling. "You mind checking it out and making sure it's a good one?"

"Ugh, can't that wait until morning?"

"Not really. If it doesn't work, I want to be able to return it and find another one before the Black Friday sales end."

Sam sighed. "Sure. Okay."

Dean brought the seventeen-inch laptop over and put it in Sam's lap, watching in silence as he flipped it open and booted it up. When the display came on, Dean watched Sam's eyes widen, flicking between his brother and the screen in confusion.

Across the black desktop background, in bright red and green letters, were the words _"Merry Christmas, Sammy."_

"Wha – Dean, what is this?"

"It's your Christmas present. A little early, I know, but I checked and all the really nice ones were on sale for Thanksgiving and Black Friday, so… Well, here you go. Um… Do you like it?"

"Dean, I… Yeah, I love it. But I thought you were getting a new one for yourself?"

"Pssh, no. I can't believe you even fell for that. I'm not enough of a nerd to need a fancy new computer for myself. I'll just use the old one for… ahem… _recreation. _And I know you won the money for it yourself, which isn't how I wanted it to work, and if you'd rather use that money for something else I understand –"

"Dean! Wait. I love it, okay? I really do. It's awesome. And I don't care that I had to win the money. I did that because I knew you could've won it without even trying if you hadn't just been sick. It seemed stupid to waste the opportunity." He closed his eyes and swallowed for a moment, groaning and lying back against the pillow. "But the after-effects definitely suck."

"Speaking of which, I think I should put this away for the night. Wouldn't want you puking all over your shiny new toy right out of the box."

"Oh, shut up."

Dean laughed. "Happy Thanksgiving, bitch."

"Happy Thanksgiving, jerk."


End file.
